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The Money shot

quote of the week

“What is especially striking is that the ads are concentrated on fewer markets than 2008, meaning that a smaller number of Americans have witnessed the onslaught of messages in the race for the White House.” —Erika Franklin Fowler, codirector of the Wesleyan Media Project. Since June 1, 915,000 election ads have run, compared with 637,000 during the same period in 2008. The WMP has visualized its findings in a series of charts like the one below. See the rest here.

attack ad of the week

Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS dark-money nonprofit has doled out $4.2 million on an ad buy in Ohio and Wisconsin, its first with a direct appeal to “please vote Mitt Romney for President.” Crossroads claims tax-exempt status as a “social welfare” group, which can not make political activity its primary purpose. (Previous ads had only asked viewers to “tell President Obama” to do something.) “Nonprofit groups are allowed to undertake some political activity as part of their missions as long as it’s not the central thing they do,” Crossroads spokesman Jonathan Collegio told NPR.

stat of the week

$60 million: The amount various groups spent this Tuesday on independent expenditures. Of that, $18 million—the biggest independent expenditure in Federal Election Commission history—came from the pro-Romney super-PAC Restore Our Future. Rove’s Crossroads network pitched in another $12 million, $8 million of it targeting Democratic Senate candidates in eight states. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee was the third highest spender with $9 million.

chart of the week

This week, outside political spending by nonprofit groups that don’t disclose their donors eclipsed $200 million, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. That’s more than all previous election cycles combined and nearly double the amount spent in 2010. It’s also probably far less than the actual total: Only ads explicitly supporting or opposing a candidate and issue ads that run within 30 days of a primary or 60 days of a general election have to be reported to the FEC. Of the disclosed dark-money spending, $74.1 million has been spent against Obama, compared with just $5.1 million spent against Romney.

Journalism That Challenges Conventional Wisdom

It's what you expect from MoJo, and this past year has made clear that the dangers for independent, critical reporting are at a record level because of a perfect storm of economic and political assaults.